Antisemitism 32

“We have been recently witnessing a terrific growth of the Jewish population of our town, mainly due to the daily arrival and settlement here of many new families coming from various places. If this current of settlement here goes on for some time, Kavalla will acquire within a few years the appearance of an entirely Jewish town and will be transformed into a second Salonica. This settlement is unfortunately considerably facilitated by the three big Jewish factories that exist in our town, owned by Allatini, Vix and Eskenazy, who are gradually substituting little by little their current Greek workers with Jew ones. If your Excellency agrees that we take various serious measures against the Jews, in cooperation with the [local Greek Orthodox] Community, and wage a systematic underground economic war against them, we can probably check a little bit this current and curb their settlement here that is growing day by day”.

Historical Archive of the Greek Foreign Ministry, file 1907/5

Nikolaos Souidas (Greek Vice-Consul in Kavalla) to the Foreign Minister Alexandros Skouzes, Kavalla, Sept. 29, 1907, No.407.

The preponderance of the Israelite community of Salonica, the main harbor and city of Ottoman Macedonia (61.439 inhabitants or 39% of its population according to the first Greek census in 1913), was considered as a negative factor for Greek irredentism. Kavalla was the region’s second port. According to the Ottoman census of 1905, it was inhabited mostly by Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians (11.242) and Moslem Turks (8.562), plus 1.862 Jews and around 1.000 unregistered Slav sojourners; it was, therefore, considered as one of the main Greek strongholds in Southern Macedonia. The Greek politico-military apparatus had already been waging since 1906 a drastic economic war, coupled with a number of terrorist attacks, against the smaller Bulgarian communities in both Salonica and Kavalla. In Salonica, recommendations by local Greek merchants for an enlargement of the scope of such operations, in order to hit their Jew professional rivals, were tactfully turned down by the leaders of the Greek Organization, who were very conscious to avoid an eventual dangerous backlash. It seems that. for similar reasons, the Vice-Consul’s suggestion for “a systematic underground economic war against the Jews” in Kavalla did not materialize. The town was finally incorporated into the Greek state after the second Balkan war, in 1913.

Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts. Christians, Moslems and Jews, 1430-1950. N. York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, pp.252-254; Αθανάσιος Σουλιώτης Νικολαΐδης, Ο Μακεδονικός Αγών. Η Οργάνωσις Θεσσαλονίκης, 1906-1908. Απομνημονεύματα, Thessaloniki: Society for Macedonian Studies - Institute for Balkan Studies, 1959.

1907